Who blew the whistle? It’s just someone who stole emails and is currently in the nick on remand for over 100 similar crimes.
The hacker Rui Pinto exposed fraud by football clubs, including Man City. He's in prison because Portugal doesn't have whistleblower protection, but if the evidence relates to crimes in other countries why not investigate that?
He’s on remand for circa 100 charges relating to hacking and also extortion.....his motives weren’t altruistic by the sounds of it.
FC Twente got banned from European football for 3 years based on an investigation prompted by his evidence, so it's not like this is an anti-City conspiracy Porto have also been punished, and Ronaldo, Mourinho, and Messi punished for tax evasion And the leaked emails are not the evidence, they just prompted an investigation, and City's attitude towards that investigation blew everything up
That could be seen as a damn good argument for changing the rules then. City should lobby UEFA to change the rules, then when Uefa do City access that sponsorship money. Oh, wait...
And that is a fair point, as argued too by Martin Samuel. Had City taken that viewpoint and argued it, perhaps they wouldn't have had to break the current rules and attempt to conceal doing so.
On the contrary - I'm betting Uefa will demand full disclosure of all City's e-mails if they're being challenged in a quasi civil court (which is what CAS is). And you can change my avatar to Terry Darracot if they don't. For a month.
FC Twente got their ban by their own domestic league not UEFA and they didn’t appeal it. It was for 3rd party ownership of players, nothing to do with FFP. Porto got a ban for being caught bribing referees in their domestic league. The emails are the evidence, as City couldn’t or wouldn’t produce any others that denied or contradicted the content of the ones produced, that were about the supposed true source of the sponsorship cash.
City's current punishment is nothing to do with FFP. Their two charges are 1) lying to UEFA and 2) obstructing a UEFA investigation
To take @Tobes position to the extreme, you could rape and murder whoever you want, then pay a "hacker" to steal your phone and leak the videos of you doing it, then laugh at the police saying "stolen evidence mate, can't touch me" Epstein should have tried that instead of getting himself suicided
This is simply untrue, City have primarily been found guilty of serious breaches of FFP by overstating sponsorship revenue. They’ve additionally been found guilty of failing to cooperate. The lying thing is something you’ve made up.